True Worship in Spirit and Truth – Part 4
David W Palmer
Imitating Father
(John 4:23–24 NKJV) “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. {24} God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
God wants your worship—your sincere, open, yielded surrender to his love and fathering. While enjoying open and transparent intimacy, he will show you his heart, his intentions, his plans, and his dreams for you. If we will simply come in response to his invitation, his grace will enable us to fulfill all that we “see” and “hear” with him—just like Jesus did:
(John 5:19–20 NKJV) Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. {20} For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.”
In John 5:19, Jesus said, “For whatever he (Father) does, the son does in like manner.” Another way of saying this would be, “whatever the Son sees the Father doing, he imitates.” Children who love their parents will imitate them; they will mimic their mannerism, their speech patterns, their actions, and their character. And this is exactly what the Holy Spirit encourages us as God’s children to do:
(Ephesians 5:1 NKJV) “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.”
In many cultures, a parent will disown a biological child if they do not follow their parents’ cultural, moral, and religious values and actions. In other words, in the Eastern culture of Jesus’s day, a son was thought of as being a person who was a replica of his Father; not only genetically, but in values, character, and actions—made in his complete image. This is how Jesus proved to his contemporaries that he was indeed God’s son—by the miracles etc. (For example, See: John 10:37)
Small children seem to find it effortless to imitate their parents; copycat behavior just happens. This is the essence of how God’s grace operates in us. When we accept God as our spiritual Father, imitating what we see with him is as natural and effortless as any child imitating a parent they love. A small child hears and sees what his parents do in the natural realm. Then, without conscious effort or thoughtful planning, he simply (but not always knowingly) imitates what he has seen and heard. This is a picture of what happens when God’s devoted worshippers see and hear things with him in the spirit; they simply enact what they have seen, and speak what they hear.
Grace’s Holiness
Although our willpower can stop this process from happening, it could never create this type of obedience. What we see and hear in the spirit—via transparent loving intimacy with Father—we enact in our lives through a spiritual power called grace. In truth, this is the essence of grace, which works in our spirit (Gal. 6:18).
(This is why the Holy Spirit calls it “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24 KJV). When he recreates us through the new birth as God’s children, we can then attain holiness—become a replica of God in values, love, actions, and morals—by effortlessly imitating the one we love and worship. This truly is good news.)
In view of this, we can now understand why God so desperately seeks true worshippers. The authentic worshipper in spirit and in truth is the person who genuinely accesses the realm where God’s grace can be found. This is the person who loves God, wants his will, and who walks in his purpose.
(Hebrews 4:16 NKJV) “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
If our endeavors don’t begin at God’s throne of grace, they are probably fleshly human effort; if they are not birthed in true worship, they are almost certainly not the works in which Father ha
